{"id":2107,"date":"2010-05-21T10:45:04","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T14:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=2107"},"modified":"2010-05-21T10:45:04","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T14:45:04","slug":"empire-strikes-back-turns-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=2107","title":{"rendered":"Empire Strikes Back Turns 30"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like I didn&#8217;t feel old enough already, now <em>The Empire Strikes Back<\/em> is <a href=\"http:\/\/media.gunaxin.com\/the-empire-strikes-back-turns-30\/54693\" target=\"_blank\">30 years old<\/a> today.\u00a0 I was (and still am) a huge <em>Star Wars<\/em> fan and while I love the original film, <em>Empire<\/em> came out when I was nine and had a far more profound impact on me simply because at that age I was really beginning to get into drawing.\u00a0 The design elements of <em>Empire<\/em> are truly amazing&#8211;from the beautiful and unique color palates for each of the film&#8217;s major locations to the bizarre, almost art deco designs of the Cloud City.\u00a0 I remember being particularly struck by the vehicles and other props in the opening Hoth sequence and can to this day draw a surprisingly-accurate Hoth rebel gun turret, having studied the film&#8217;s many design elements over and over from &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Art-Star-Wars-Episode-Strikes\/dp\/0345410882\" target=\"_blank\">The Art of The Empire Strikes Back<\/a>.&#8221;\u00a0 On a purely visceral level, I can still recall quite vividly the feeling of downright awe I experienced as a nine year-old seeing the opening battle scene of this film for the first time at the Navy base theater in Pearl Harbor where we were living at the time.\u00a0 I&#8217;d pore over the film again and again in the years following via a bootleg VHS of the film my dad had somehow acquired back in the days when a VCR was an amazing new thing&#8211;that was about the size of a sofa cushion.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, in honor of the 30th, I&#8217;ve dredged up a few sketchbook drawings of <em>Empire <\/em>characters done by me, I&#8217;d guess at age ten or so:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"yoda\" href=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2010\/05\/yoda.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment wp-att-2108 centered\" src=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2010\/05\/yoda.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"yoda\" width=\"257\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"bfett\" href=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2010\/05\/bfett.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment wp-att-2109 centered\" src=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2010\/05\/bfett.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"bfett\" width=\"176\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>(Remember, kids: always rough in your character lightly with pencil first.\u00a0 That way you won&#8217;t run out of room and have to use masking tape to attach an sheet of paper for the feet!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like I didn&#8217;t feel old enough already, now The Empire Strikes Back is 30 years old today.\u00a0 I was (and still am) a huge Star Wars fan and while I love the original film, Empire came out when I was nine and had a far more profound impact on me simply because at that age &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=2107\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,12],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p46veT-xZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2110,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions\/2110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}